Nathaniel and Ella

The children asked if they could watch “Friends” - it’s their new favourite programme. They seem to get the humour. I’d forgotten how amusing it was. Just a shame about the canned laughter. #1 daughter no doubt introduced us and her sisters to it.

Nathaniel wanted to see how my current phone did better photos than the previous one so I took this one of him. The other is Ella walking the monkey bars.

We got ourselves out to Cragside so that they could enjoy the trim trail. Ella is too tall for the monkey bars now - she hung on and walked along much to Nathaniel’s amusement. He was happy he could now reach up to them (by jumping).

Their dad arrived after lunch to pick them up then Mr C and I cracked on with cooking (me) and cleaning (him) for Chris, Ailie, Carol and Phil arriving at 6.30.

We’ll have a starter of Italian meats, melon, manchego, olives and char-grilled peppers.

It’s curry night - all veggie. A courgette and cannellini bean one in coconut milk with mustard seeds, cumin seeds, garlic, fresh coriander, turmeric and ginger. A roast veg (sweet potato, aubergine, onion and red pepper with chick peas in tomatoes. Dal with mushrooms and carrots, topped with hard boiled eggs. A spiced basmati rice, nan bread, brinjal pickle and cucumber riata to accompany.

The only pudding is ice cream with a liqueur we got in Bosnia. I thought that was enough. (It wasn’t - cheese was required).

Good news is my Lebara SIM arrived and it worked straight away. So not us being dopey, just Vodafone is better than ID and Three here and with their communication.

In the middle of my cooking the surgery phoned about my request to get our tetanus, typhoid, hepA etc up-dated as I found from the records they printed for me I’d had none for 15 years- they used to tell us when they were due. Apparently we should have gone to them not the travel clinic for advice and that needs doing 6 weeks before travel. (Which it was at the clinic). I understood from them years ago they didn’t do advice about malaria etc and we had to go private. Anyway instead of giving us our annual medical review 3 days before we travel they’ll do the travel one. I’ve to go to get a form from them and fill in where we are going so they can advise and give us what we need. Talk about wasting NHS time.

We had a lovely evening despite 2 guests arriving 15 minutes early when I hadn’t even got lipstick on.